The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork ImaginariesIn The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation. Work, she contends, is a legitimate, even crucial, subject for political theory. |
Contents
The Problem with Work | 1 |
Mapping the Work Ethic | 37 |
Marxism Productivism and the Refusal of Work | 79 |
Working Demands From Wages for Housework to Basic Income | 113 |
Hours for What We Will Work Family and the Demand for Shorter Hours | 151 |
The Future Is Now Utopian Demands and the Temporalities of Hope | 175 |
A Life beyond Work | 227 |
Notes | 235 |
References | 255 |
| 275 | |
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The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork ... Kathi Weeks No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
affective affirmation alternative analysis anti-utopianism antiwork Antonio Negri argues autonomist autonomist Marxism basic income Bloch capital capitalist challenge claim commitment conceived concept concrete Costa and James critical critique daydream demand for basic demand for shorter demand for wages desire different future discourse domestic labor economic eternal return example expansive feminism feminist focus Fordist function gender division hope ideal imagination individual industrial insistence labor power less liberal manifesto Marx Marx's Marxist Marxist feminism mode movement Negri Nietzsche organization Paolo Virno perspective political Popper poses possible post-Fordism post-Fordist postwork potential practice present problem production productivism productivist Protestant ethic Protestant work ethic provocation reform refusal relationship ressentiment serve shorter hours social reproduction socialist socialist feminism society specific struggle subjects surplus value theory tion traditional utopian demand utopian form vision wage relation waged labor wages for housework Weber Whereas women workers